Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) will ask parliament to meet in an extraordinary session to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, party leader Özgür Özel said Friday, the Bianet news website reported.
Parliament is currently in summer recess.
Özel said CHP group deputy chairs will call their counterparts in other parties to collect the highest possible number of signatures and will submit the request to the Speaker’s Office on Monday. He said the assembly should discuss the issue in full and decide how to support Palestine and added that the legislature should keep working on the matter rather than adjourn again.
The call comes after a UN-backed food security analysis declared famine in Gaza.
The UN says more than half a million people are in famine with starvation, preventable deaths and destitution.
Secretary-General António Guterres called it a man-made disaster and said Israel, as the occupying power, must ensure food and medical supplies. UN agencies urge an immediate ceasefire to allow full aid operations and the release of all hostages.
The IPC projects famine conditions will spread from Gaza City to Deir al Balah and Khan Younis within weeks.
The UN reports 98 percent of cropland damaged or inaccessible, nine in 10 people repeatedly displaced and 12,000 children identified as acutely malnourished in July, the highest monthly figure on record.
Officials say aid stocks sit at crossings due to systematic obstruction and describe this as the first confirmed famine in the Middle East.